Sberbank launched payment service SberPay in Russia for Android

Contactless payment services have long surprised no one, and NFC has ceased to be a hallmark of exceptionally expensive flagships. Now it is even somehow strange to see that a person pays at the cash register with cash or a card, and does not use a smartphone for this purpose. After all, his phone or smart watch worn on his wrist must have support for Apple Pay or Google Pay. So why, in this case, bother with fiddling in your wallet, if you can quickly and safely pay for the purchase with a gadget? Sberbank is of the same opinion.

Sberbank launched payment service SberPay in Russia for Android

Sberbank has its own contactless service

Today Sberbank launched its contactless payment service in Russia called SberPay. In essence, it is a direct competitor to Samsung Pay and Google Pay, because due to technical restrictions iOS it will only be available on Android, where NFC modules are at the full disposal of third-party developers. That is, users will be able to pay for purchases in their usual way: they took out a smartphone, activated a payment instrument and attached it to a terminal with contactless payment support.

Why SberPay is worse than Google Pay

Sberbank launched payment service SberPay in Russia for Android

SberPay is far from ideal. At least early on

True, one must immediately say about the limitations that will be characteristic of SberPay at an early stage:

  • SberPay only supports Visa, MasterCard and Mir promise to tie up later;
  • Only Sberbank's own cards can be used for payment through SberPay;
  • Settlements via SberPay will be possible only in stores serviced by Sberbank;
  • After payment, the screen will display the amount of the balance on the card, which can be seen by others.

The main interface for transferring payment information that SberPay uses is, of course, NFC. However, in addition to contactless offline payment, the service supports online payment, for example, in applications and on websites, and also allows you to pay invoices. Sberbank suggests that this function will work as follows: the client calls the call center and names the product he wants to purchase, the operator sends a push notification to his number with a link to the payment, after which the client checks the data and confirms the payment.

How to enable SberPay

But how to enable SberPay or what needs to be done to start using it, I did not understand. Despite the fact that an advertising story has appeared in Sberbank Online promoting the new service, there are still no buttons to enable it either in the application or in the system settings Android, although I have a Visa, which is logic can already start to pay. Even in the section with information about a bank card it says that it is available for contactless payment, but Google Pay is offered to me as the only service.

Why do you need SberPay

Sberbank launched payment service SberPay in Russia for Android

QR payments are also available to Sberbank customers, although not within SberPay

Generally speaking, it is strange that Sberbank woke up only now and launched SberPay in 2020, and not at least in 2017. Then he had a good opportunity to gain a foothold in the payment services market and compete with foreign products. But Sberbank believes that they are not late and SberPay will be popular. The target audience of the service includes, oddly enough, smartphone users Huawei and Honor, who were left without access to Google Pay due to US sanctions. Well, it might work. True, for this it is not enough just to launch SberPay and wait for users to become interested in it.

To attract an audience to the new service, Sberbank will obviously have to try. I would start by organizing promotions, for example, by offering newcomers discounts, increased cashback, although Sberbank has it just awful, or some gifts. In general, I would try to somehow buy a user, explaining to him that paying through SberPay is not only convenient, because it is already built into the bank's application, but also profitable. Otherwise, I would not expect the service to 'fly'.

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